Interview Questions

Interview questions are crucial to identifying talent and can make the difference between hiring the right person and simply filling a position.

However, not all interview questions are made equal.

Many hiring managers, including the “HR specialists” get it wrong. Why this bold assertion? Well, is your business the best-in-its-class? If the answer is an unequivocal “yes” – then, move along, as you’re doing great. But if you reckon you can do better – then, linger awhile for your own sake, whether you are a business owner or a salaried manager.

Episode 1: Click on image

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You don’t make champagne from lemons. Lemons are great, have high concentrates of vitamin C. But you need grapes to make fine champagne.

Put another way, every employee is perfect. However, the challenge is to find the person perfect for your requirements.

Once you gather the correct raw material, the chances of making fine champagne, challenging as it might be, is far better than starting with lemons – no matter how perfect the lemons.

Episode 2: Click on image

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How do you find the right people? At the interview.

What is the most important aspect of the interview? The questions.

What interview questions do most hiring managers pose? The standard, the most “common questions” that everyone can find on the internet. Right!

What answers do you expect from the candidates? The standard pre-primed answers that everyone can find on the internet. Right!

How do you hope to choose the best if everyone is using the same question bank? Aha!

You don’t build best-in-class teams by following the herd. Look at the questions you can find even on the websites of many “brand name” employment agencies. Ordinary.

It is shocking that anyone can even come up with a bank of useful questions without first:

Defining the job scope – what you expect the candidate to do.

2. Defining the job requirement – the qualifications, the experience (or better yet, the expertise) and the intangibles (the human attributes) required to do the job.

Only after you have defined the job scope and job requirements, will you know what to look for in a candidate. Then, and only then, can you formulate the questions to identify these attributes in a candidate.

Repeat this and commit it to memory:

Customise every set of questions for the job scope and job requirement.